You’ve probably already seen this. I know I have. But I think it’s lovely. For me, it’s the dancing beaver that makes it. If everybody danced like a beaver, why, this world would be… weirder. Like, a lot weirder. But more nicerer too.

I love music. I love rock music. So when a friend asked me recently, “if you could meet anybody from history, alive or dead, who would you meet?”, as a music lover the answer was easy: Noel Gallagher. Dead.

Because I hate Oasis. I hate their music, their haircuts, their stupid, meaningless choruses. If they have pets I hate them too. And now they’ve split, which I suppose is a slightly less drastic solution than the one I proposed, but… ah, it’ll do. So hooray, some good news after the melancholic navel-gazing of my last post.

I thought I had the opportunity to put an end to the Gallagher’s witless, leaden, derivative drudge-rock back in the nineties, when Radio 1 ran a competition to win Noel’s guitar. “Fuck me”, I thought, “I’ll enter that!” but then I realised he probably had another one. Foiled again.

Depending on how deep you want to go, Nacho Vigalondo’s Sunday is either a funny film with a simple-yet-clever punchline (the basic idea behind which is similar to one I had once, but hey, you snooze, you lose) or an allegory about what happens when you get so focussed on the petty concerns and trivialities of life that you miss the true magic happening right in front of you. Or behind you. Or behind the camera.

Yeah. Actually, that analysis doesn’t really hold up when you think about it so… don’t think about it. What can I say? I’m no Chris Tookey.

So that was nice. I wandered around, read a good book (Hiding the Elephant by Jim Steinmeyer if you’re interested), sat on the beach, pondered. Frankly, I didn’t want to leave. The sooner I get away from the orange-skied delight of Middlesbrough, the better.

OK, enough personal baloney, we want a joke: So I grew up near a town called Redcar, which was famous for an ice-cream called the lemontop – basically a tasty, tangy yellowy citrus topping to the vanilla cone confection.

Mm, we loved it. Trouble is, is taught a generation of kids to not be afraid of yellow snow. So come winter, we’d be out in the snow and:

I had a mocha by the sea in the rain this afternoon. It’s the only way to drink coffee! Well, it is if you’re by the sea in the rain. Coffee and the sea are 2 of the 5 or so things I can’t live without. I know, theoretically nobody could live without the sea, but it’s a proximity thing for me. Love a rough stormy ocean. Add coffee, we’re close to happy. Don’t mix em too literally: nobody wants a storm in a coffee cup. Zing!